Police officers, soldiers, and security personnel are often required to carry handguns or nightsticks or other weapons in the course of their duties. These weapons, when properly used, enable such individuals to perform their jobs effectively and may help save that person""s life or the life of another. For maximum effectiveness, weapons must be kept close at hand, and thus they are frequently carried out in the open in a holster on a person""s belt or otherwise attached to a person""s body.
Care must be taken to prevent malefactors from disarming an authorized user, and to this end, straps, snaps, and other fasteners are often used to hold a weapon securely in a holster. However, on some occasions, such as during a confrontation with a suspected criminal, the weapon will be removed from its holster. At this point it becomes a target for theft by the suspect. If the suspect is strong, or if a person is confronting multiple suspects, a chance exists that the suspect may disarm the authorized user and use the weapon against him. Thus, efforts have been made to secure weapons to the person of authorized users in a manner that leaves the weapon readily available, but prevents the weapon from being removed from the immediate vicinity of the user""s person. However, existing products of this type often suffer from problems such as being inconvenient to use and/or interfering with use of the weapon by its owner.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,022 to McCoy, for example, shows a cable device that is attachable to the butt of a handgun. The cable is retractably housed in a reel mounted on the user""s belt. When the weapon is drawn, the user pulls as much cable as necessary from the reel and uses the weapon. Presumably, the cable is short enough to prevent the weapon from being stolen and used against its owner. However, reel mechanisms are subject to jamming, and a person may suddenly find that he is unable to draw and aim his weapon when confronted with a dangerous situation. When lives are at stake, the use of such a security device is risky.
Other types of lanyard devices can also be used to secure a weapon to an individual, but these devices can interfere with the rapid drawing or reholstering of a weapon. Such devices, disadvantageously, leave the user with a choice between risking the theft of his weapon and the possibility that the weapon will not be immediately available when needed in an emergency.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a device for securing a weapon to a person""s body in a manner that leaves it available for free use by the owner of the weapon but that frustrates attempts by unauthorized persons to disarm the user.
The present invention addresses these problems and others by providing an attachment device that connects a weapon securely to an authorized user, that has no complex mechanisms to jam or malfunction, and that is easy to use and relatively inexpensive to manufacture. While the invention is particularly well-suited for use in retaining weapons, and will be described herein primarily in connection with a handgun, its use is not limited to securing such items and could easily be used to secure a flashlight, tool, cellular phone, or similar object to an individual.
In a preferred embodiment, the invention comprises a strap that wraps around a person""s belt and an elongate loop of metal attached to the strap on the side of the strap that faces away from the person""s body. The loop serves as a guide or rail for retaining a ring attached to one end of a tether while leaving it free to slide back and forth over the part of the loop that is not in contact with the belt strap. Because of this attachment arrangement, the attached end of the tether has a large degree of freedom and the tether can be oriented in almost any direction. This in turn allows a device attached to the other end of the tether, such as a handgun, to be removed from a holster on a person""s belt and returned thereto with a minimum of interference from the tether. Additionally, this arrangement allows the tether itself to be formed from a strong and relatively inflexible material without making the tether awkward to use. Such tethers, if connected directly to a belt, would resist movement in many directions, rendering the weapon more difficult to use. This problem is substantially eliminated by the present invention.
In another aspect, the tether is formed from a flexible but inelastic material such as spring steel. A majority of the length of the tether is coiled into a spring shape that looks and functions much like a coiled telephone cord, and in fact, a length of telephone cord may be used for this purpose. At rest, the coil is compact, but it can easily be stretched to allow the weapon or other item attached to the tether to be used.
Preferably the strap portion of the device that attaches the user""s body is formed from a woven material that is strong yet flexible and resistant to cutting and abrasion. The ends of the strap may be joined to one another to hold the strap around a belt using snaps, hook and loop fastening material, or similar connectors. A portion of the elongate loop of metal may be secured to the strap by passing one end of the strap through the loop, folding the end of the strap over and fastening it to itself. Beneficially, when secured in this manner, the elongate loop is free to pivot with respect to the belt to further reduce resistance to tether movement.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a tether for attaching an object to an individual.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a tether for securing a weapon to an individual in a manner that allows use of the weapon only by the individual wearing the tether.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a retractable tether that is compact when not in use but which can quickly and reliably be extended when the tethered object is needed.
It is still a further object of the invention to provide a security device for frustrating attempts at disarming a person carrying a weapon.
It is still another object of the invention to provide a security device for preventing the accidental loss or theft of a weapon.